Work Text:
“Havve…?”
Out here, among the stars, no matter the hour; everything’s… dark. Not in the scary way, deeply yawning and endlessly endless; more so in the roundabout way. In a way that causes one to lose track. That’s what happens when there’s no days and no nights. You’re forced to make your own time in spaces like these. Seconds on a microwave, minutes in the shower, hours spent watching mindless reality TV. Just like when they’re on the road, sleep happens when it fucking happens.
Except when it comes to Havve.
In a sense, it’s ‘early’ on the ship- deep into what Sung has thus dubbed the graveyard shift and yet starting to near it’s end. Havve had been at it for six hours, give or take, pulling apart endless data forms with his optics and clawing through all sorts of junk and bullshit. By now, everyone else should be deep asleep, but there’s Phobos somehow. Messy haired and bundled up in a gods damned kigurumi, his mismatched socks and little voice preceding him. Havve gives an inquisitive tilt of his head before swiveling his chair towards the Lepid in silent greeting, the light of his ongoing project spilling out over the two of them. “...Bright…” The smaller male mumbles sourly and suddenly, ducking his head as he does with an irritated sound.
Sweet thing, Havve pivots back with a silent chuckle before dimming the countless screens down. ‘I thought you liked bright things.’ He signs as Phobos totters over, yawning and rubbing at his too-big eyes. He squints at the text after a beat. Makes an annoyed face. Hisses as if it’s offended him. And Havve really can’t blame him, either. It’s more or less nonsense at this point. Command files and crunched binary and footnotes that seem practically infinite. It doesn’t help that Sung had been the one to piece it all together in the first place, of course. His work ethic and note taking practices were a complete nightmare. ‘Little moth.’ Havve teases. At this point he’s grateful for a distraction. Gods. He's eager for it.
Said little moth makes a quiet sound in the back of his throat before his fingers absently find the soft crook of synthetic skin that stretches between Havve’s throat and collarbone, petting it without any kind of real thought before making that sound a second time. It’s sighing but not sighing. Breathing with and without meaning. A pause given life. “Stereotype.” He finally mouths, amused. “I mean, I can, I do. It’s just this is very bright. Even now. Very… blue .” He clarifies as he gestures to the ‘everything’ happening on the screen. “Blue light plus little moth equals a bad time.”
Havve shutters his optics with a laugh only he can hear before shutting the whole thing down. ‘You should be asleep, Phobos.’ He signs as the red of his vision washes over them instead, body and chair creaking as he allows himself the luxury of leaning back. ‘In your nice, warm bed.’ The temptation proves too much then and he reaches out without warning, giving the slouchy fabric a lazy series of tugs, gauging the other’s reaction. It’s all purple and pink and black and stupidly soft, with a little mischievous face at the top grinning back at him.
And Phobos blinks a few times in response before giving a soft, breathless kind of laugh of his own. It’s half there, just like the Lepid, and it causes Havve’s amusement to flicker-shift-tumble out of him. ‘Dreaming the night away, not awake.’ He hesitates, fingers popped wide by his the black and red of his eyes. He thumbs his chin then. Shakes his head. Holds both palms up placatingly- a gesture of good will. ‘Not here.’
Not here, not here, not here.
Something changes, subtly unsubtle, like that laughing un-laugh. Phobos’s fingers, his systems indicate quietly, pausing for no more than a millisecond before starting up again. “I was.” He leaves at that, because he knows Havve knows, second hand from their favorite empath. But there was smoke, and there was fire, and there was Meouch but not Meouch towering over him. Feral, terrible, fucking mutilating him. And Deimos. Deimos, Deimos, Deimos. Sapling green and forever bleeding, lips forming words that would be lost to the stars and the wind. “But now I’m not.” He laughs once more and it’s so brittle and little and desperately trying to make him seem braver than he actually is.
Havve’s 808 stutter-skips in the silence, causing Phobos to flinch.
Normally, when this happens, Phobos is right at Sung’s doorstep; spending hours upon hours working through every thought and feeling, the sound of guitar notes and synth songs subsequent. But Sung’s been in his own head (and Havve’s) for the better part of this last week, working on this asinine… project. A long forgotten universal mystery. A species supposedly frozen in space-time. (“Some real Dyson’s Eternal Intelligence-Gold Universe Theory gone wrong, bud. Next level stuff.” Sung had proposed originally, anxious and eager to find out what was really going on.) Because of that though, the smaller man had been gathering facts and playing keep-away from the rest of the band. It had been quieter on the ship because of it. Stiller. Strange and honestly unwelcome after all these years.
Havve tugs at the fabric again and Phobos moves with it, shuffling closer until his knees are snug against the robot’s hip. ‘I will.’ Phobos signs slowly, mouthing along as he does. His body is half-slouched as he says it. His eyes somewhere else. Another lifetime, on a long dead planet, choking on ash and screaming at the burning sky. ‘I’ll get there.’
Liar, Havve thinks sadly, no you won’t. Not at this rate, anyhow.
‘Can I help?’ There’s an unspoken language between them, literally and figuratively. Had been for years now. Before Phobos had broken his vow, Havve had been the one to help him refine his sign language and practices, pulling from different cultures and planets across the universe. They had spent countless hours (no, that was a lie too, he could count every second if he really wanted to) creating a means of speaking that didn’t require a single word. Music too. Bombus had given him that damn guitar on Mojave, sure. And Sung was always the one to help him restring it. But Havve had been the one to show him how to tame it. To quell it’s high shrieks and static feedback. To channel his hurts and aches into sound and song. Hell. He had been the one to bandage the Lepid’s slim fingers the first time his blisters had finally broken from playing for so long. To press his thumbs into his palms until Phobos’s hands stopped seizing and write into his wrists that he understood. The pain. The need. The unending, ever hungry hurt. How you couldn’t ever play hard enough or fast enough to fully get it out, it seemed, even when you wanted to.
It had all been so different back then, though.
But tonight, in a darkness that isn’t so much darkness as it is a lack of light and timing, this moment feels like a memory.
But tonight, in this very moment, it feels like they're falling back in time.
“Dunno.” Phobos sighs, back to speaking, yet still barely anything. He’s slumping further as he does. Falling asleep at the wheel. He jerks awake just as quickly though, pressing his lips together, his dull black eyes nearly squinching shut. “I just… I don’t want to close my eyes.” He admits tiredly, obviously pained by it. “Because when I do-”
The smoke. The fire. Meouch, feral and terrible and mutilating. Deimos’s sacrifice.
His 808 repeats that same stutter-skip and surprisingly, Phobos doesn’t flinch this time.
Thing is, he needs to sleep. This isn’t a night to pour it all out in the practice room until they finally manage to chase whatever’s haunting them away. They’ve all been keeping such odd hours because of this and Phobos especially has been the most sensitive to it. He’s the best at hiding it too, of course. Quieter than Sung. Warmer than Meouch. But if he digs in, Havve can scan the other’s vitals. Pinpoint the lapses in his circadian rhythm, the way his diet’s been fluctuating, gods! The way his immune system has been weakening and this close to falling apart.
He lets his fans whirr louder than necessary before slowly crooking his finger at the Lepid. “Hmm?’ Phobos offers him a slow blink before leaning down, that stupid little hood slipping over his eyebrows, still grinning and winking at him. He doesn’t even try and sign out the rest, twining his arms around the other’s lower back and into the chair and into him instead. Soft. So soft. So light it still comes as a surprise that gravity can even hold him most days. “Woah, woah…” Havve expects some kind of squirming or push back when he says that, but no, he’s settling in instead. Not even blinking. Simply cocking his chin at him. “Hi.” Phobos says after a moment, because that’s all there is to say. Nothing else and nothing further.
And that's okay.
Hi, he wants to mouth back, but there’s no physical way to do so. He knocks the hood back instead and carefully tugs at a curl instead, his gaze going rosy and filling the room. It’s starting to get long again, curling past the nape and hanging in his eyes. Cherubic. Fae-like. A sylph, born of the gods, airy and silk spun. And then Phobos makes this… sound. So different from the one before, this one spring soft and full of life and much, much more. This is Sung’s territory, he tries to admonish himself, with one hand cupped around the Lepid’s hip and the other still tangled up in his locks, the Lepid flushed and smiling.
But he is Sung, in a way. A dark and wavering mirror of the other. A shadow stretched sideways and endlessly long.
Phobos eventually opens his eyes and brings one finger up, sliding it down the side of his face plate before dragging it back up silently. “This is different.” He says, then laughs. “Different-nice. Different-good.” He breathes, and Havve breathes with him even though it’s not necessary to do so. It feels right. All of this feels so right and he doesn’t want it to stop. It’s not a familiar feeling, per se, but something that’s always lingered in the back of his mind. Something he couldn’t help thinking about.
Residuals. This could very well be residuals. Echoes. Something. Hell. It could be Sung himself- springing up through their link, dreaming this moment with his own hands and his own face. But it’s more than that. More than second hand feelings. More than any logical reasoning his more clinical side can dish out. Because he’s more than Sung, at the end of the day. He’s self taught. Self made. “What are you thinking about?” Phobos murmurs, fingers cupping at his ragged jaw, drawing him back. “Ones and zeroes?” He laughs fondly, causing Havve to dramatically roll his optics back. “Hey, you hit me with a stereotype-”
‘F-A-I-R.’ Havve taps out in morse code on his hip. He leans back further and Phobos follows him, until they’re both nearly horizontal and cradled by the captain’s chair. He moves his hands then, up his sides and to his back, secretly thrilling in the way the Lepid’s antennae curl. The way his spine arches. The way he makes that spring sweet sound a second time. ‘S-L-E-E-P.’ He drums each letter out quietly. He can feel the momentary hesitation that follows. Phobos tensing, inhaling sharply, his fingers clutching at whatever they can find. So Havve keeps drumming, his 808 following in tandem, a strangely comforting melody. ‘I-L-L K-E-E-P T-H-E B-A-D D-R-E-A-M-S A-W-A-Y.’
“You would.” His voice is softer and smaller than usual. Fading, fading, fading away. “If anyone could, it’s you, Havve. S’always, always you.” Mercifully, Havve watches as his eyes slip shut as his breathing deepens, sleep finally finding it’s way.
Havve sits there for just a while longer, his cool fingers cupped along the back of Phobos’s neck and optics on the ceiling, content to simply be there and listen quietly. It would be ‘morning’ soon, in a couple hours, and Meouch would be up first to make coffee, and there would be so much to do in such little time.
But here, tonight, this is all there is and all there ever will be.
A dark room and an even darker sky.